After an 11th-hour candidacy announcement and a bruising race against her close ally in City Hall and a former reality TV star, Nithya Raman will become the 44th mayor of Los Angeles next month. On a long to-do list that includes homelessness, public transit, affordability and the 2028 Olympics, there is also the ongoing decline of film and TV production in the city and the all-hands-on-deck efforts to reverse it.
Raman’s connections to Hollywood were a key part of the coalition that fueled both her upset victory to join the L.A. City Council in 2020 over incumbent David Ryu and her defeat of incumbent mayor and longtime L.A. political figure Karen Bass.
Her husband, Vali Chandrasekaran, is a veteran writer-producer with credits on “My Name Is Earl,” “30 Rock” and “Modern Family,” among other shows. Her celebrity donor list included Tina Fey, Cord Jefferson, Mindy Kaling, Adam Conover, Adam Scott and Colin Jost; and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger arranged meetings for her with some of the city’s top business leaders earlier this year.
Now, they and hundreds of thousands of entertainment workers and business owners that rely on the film and TV industry will look to Raman to find a way to stop the decline in employment opportunities that has continued in 2026 despite a dramatic expansion of California’s production incentive.
While that incentive has brought major animation projects by Disney and DreamWorks back to L.A. and has helped with soundstage occupancy, the most recent quarterly report detailing on-location shooting from FilmLA showed that shoot days on the streets of the city sank another 4.8% year-over-year in the third quarter and 29% below the five-year average.
When it came to Hollywood, the biggest difference between Raman and Bass on the campaign trail was on their diverging views towards the legal battle between Paramount Skydance and California Attorney General Rob Bonta over the former’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. While Bass, like much of California’s Democratic leadership, urged Bonta to settle, Raman wanted the lawsuit blocking the merger to go to trial next year. Ultimately, Bonta went Bass’ way.
But in terms of their proposed solutions to make Los Angeles a better place to film again, the two candidates were fairly aligned, promising to work with FilmLA, the city council and the Board of Public Works to reduce fees, expedite permit processes and simplify the city’s byzantine list of special rules for shoots that change depending on the neighborhood and sometimes even the street being shot on.
The biggest divergence in Raman’s platform was her promise to establish a full film office within City Hall, expanding upon the role of film liaison that Bass established with the appointment of Board of Public Works President Steve Kang. With an expanded film office, Raman argued, the city will be able to coordinate more efficiently with L.A. County and other government offices when shows such as “Baywatch,” which filmed at Will Rogers State Beach, film in locations with potential jurisdictional conflicts.
Along with retaining Kang as liaison, a duty he performs on a volunteer basis, Raman will have to find room for that potential film office in her first proposal to the City Council for Los Angeles’ $14 billion-plus budget that will be due in April. It will be one of many areas that she and the city council will have to balance as the local government is recovering from a layoff-inducing fiscal emergency last year in the wake of the 2025 wildfires.
Beyond that, much of Raman’s work on the production front will involve continuing the effort that was being put in over the past year, coordinating with FilmLA and the city council’s recently established committee to address production flight. That committee is chaired by North Hollywood Councilmember Adrin Nazarian and also consists of Westside CM Traci Park and San Fernando Valley CM Imelda Padilla, two members who locked horns with Raman on other issues like housing and homelessness during her time on the city council.
Recent reforms enacted by the city council include free permits for microshoots and $1 rental fees for city-owned lots that shoots need for base camp and crew parking. The council is also exploring ways to reduce fees related to fire and safety inspections while FilmLA has extended through April a pilot program that offers faster and cheaper permits to productions that have small crew sizes and no extensive safety inspections, saving indie productions that qualify more than $1,000 on average in fees.
Raman is also expected to lobby Sacramento lawmakers to further expand the state’s production incentive program to take advantage of a federal film tax credit that is likely to pass through Congress by the end of this year. Outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked Governor-elect Xavier Becerra and next year’s legislature to raise the cap of the program from $750 million to $1 billion, though industry insiders tell TheWrap that California will have to uncap the program and allow productions to count salaries of above-the-line talent to be truly competitive against major American filming hubs like New York, New Jersey and Georgia.
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